There’s a kind of stress that doesn’t leave when the problem is solved. The kind that’s lived in your body for so long, it stops needing a reason. You carry it through quiet days, peaceful moments, even joy—like background noise in your bones. When you’ve spent years surviving something heavy, stress becomes a habit, a reflex. And when the original trigger is gone, your mind starts looking for new reasons to justify its presence. You reverse the cause and effect—stress first, reason second. It’s exhausting. Chronic stress reshapes you slowly, subtly, until calm feels unfamiliar. We deserve to feel safe inside our own skin again. We just forget how.
The Little Popcorn.